Sep 8, 2009
The Estrogen Feedback Loop
On September 9th, Canadians subscribing to cable will get a free preview of Dusk, a new format for the specialty channel formerly known as Scream. Scream was an excellent example of how networks used to believe specialty channels work: you can find a niche — the narrower the better — throw together a few low-budget original programs, and fill out the rest of the schedule with inexpensive films and syndicated programs. It’s win-win — by going after a tiny fraction of the total TV audience, you ensure viewer loyalty: viewers who like horror know where to go to get it 24 hours a day, and the programming, because it’s mostly recycled, is cheap, so covering costs is easy. The numbers and profits are small (which is to be expected in country with literally hundreds of channels), but the cost / revenue balance is favourable.
Scream was, as the name implies, a channel for horror buffs. When it launched, it consistently showed classic horror movies like Hallowe’en and Hellraiser, and episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Under the new format, Dusk is seeking a wider audience.
This is the same pattern we saw with the SciFi network in the US, originally a specialty channel that featured shows like Battlestar Galactica, but which is now SyFy, in order to not ostracise the non-sci-fi lovers out there. The idiocy of this move should be immediately obvious to anyone: why would a channel devoted to science fiction want non-science-fiction-lovers watching, and how can they get them without losing the viewers they already have? It’s clear the intention is to be able to air not only shows that appeal to niche markets, but to everyone in front of the set, thereby expanding viewership. The issue, of course, is that niche channels are generally the only one of their type in the market (and in fact, the CRTC expressly prohibits the co-existence of two competing specialty channels of the same format) so they have a monopoly on that niche genre’s viewership — whereas channels going for a general audience compete with every other channel seeking a general audience. With a hundred channels to choose from, a channel could not expect to get more than one percent of viewship, without a way of making its programming stand out somehow.
Another excellent example of a diluted brand is E! Canada. E! was not legally designated a specialty channel (in Ontario, it was simply a rebranding of the formerly-independent CHCH, later ONtv, into an all-entertainment channel, riding the fugacious trend of celebrity worship; versions in Victoria, Kelowna, Montreal, and Red Deer had similar provenance — and a similar fate), but it was a de facto specialty channel network, since it targeted a niche market — namely, the celebrity news and gossip market. When E!’s numbers started to decline, E! reverted back to its original positioning; as the wiki entry so eloquently puts it, “Global programs were sometimes sent ‘down’ to CH if two programs aired by Global begin to air simultaneously on separate U.S. networks, so Canwest could maximize its simultaneous substitution opportunities.” This is how a channel branded as entertainment progamming (read: Hollywood celebrity worship) ended up showing pro golf tournaments. Eventually all five channels were sold off, shut down, or bought out by station employees.
A brief aside about the concept of brand: as ad wizard David Olgilvy once said, “Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the marketplace.” That is to say, every brand conveys the spirit of the intended user, and reflects back to the user the image of himself as he would like to be. The stronger the brand, the stronger the identification, and the more loyalty your consumer will show you. An excellent example of this is Apple’s Mac v. PC ads, in which they actually show two actors who are able to instantly telegraph not only Apple’s intended personality (young, hip, smart, savvy, and slightly sarcastic) but also the competitor’s (obtuse, old, stocky, and square). Forget for a moment that John Hodgman has more hipster cred than Justin Long ever will: in terms of showing an identifiable brand, this campaign provides you with an actual human model for the archetype the consumer is intended to aspire to — and Apple’s fanboys are nothing if not loyal. Clearly they must see themselves in Apple’s corporate “personality.”
Television channels, even more than computers, rely on creating a strong brand to attract and keep viewers. Television is probably the easiest product ever created to market towards specific lifestyles, precisely because of the nature of the product: programming. Who watches the types of shows you’re airing? The answer to that question will cement your brand. With niche specialty channels like SciFi, E! and Scream, the audiences are virtually built-in. SciFi and E!, in particular, had such a strong content / audience-demographic correlation that advertising buys were very straightforward.
So what happened? How did all three of these channels cease to exist? The answer in each case is the same: dilution of brand. Not content to target a niche market, the programming began to slip, choosing more and more programming of more general appeal. Syfy, in specific, has announced plans to investigate the possibility of adding cooking and talk shows. And Scream’s new brand, Dusk, is a much softer image: imagine the Twilight series as a specialty channel. As Corus Media’s website puts it, “SCREAM TV will be changing to become DUSK and will feature an even more female-friendly line-up of programming.”
A pattern begins to emerge. Specialty channels originally launched as niche brands targeting a narrow audience using cheaply obtained programming dilute their brands to reach a more general audience — and not just any audience, but a more female audience. Male- or gender-neutral-oriented programming is pushed to the side as more stereotypically “female” programming slowly creeps further and further up the dial. As a feminist, what perturbs me most about this is the insinuation that women don’t like generalised programming: to reach a female audience, one must feed them a steady diet of love triangles and talk shows. Because let’s face it — it’s not really a female audience these channels are after, it’s a certain type of female audience. Not all women watch TV, after all, but you’d never guess: TV programmers project television as an accurate mirror of the world. It is in fact extremely warped: this mirror doesn’t reflect women with interests in business, the arts, science, or current affairs at all.
While this trend is disappointing to viewers who are slowly watching their favourite brands disappear, and are forced to look longer and harder for something to watch, it’s a natural consequence of TV’s shifting demographics in the first place. To get an idea of who is watching TV (or who is supposed to be watching TV), look at the ads: who wants to buy what they’re selling? For years, there have been two types of ads on TV: ads aimed at children (which form a small fraction of all ads, since kids have no money to spend) and ads aimed at young parents, in particular young mothers. There are ads for home cleansers, yogurt that helps you poop, instant rice, affordable 4-door sedans, and Tylenol. The tone of the ads is equally important: we are exposed over and over to the archetype of the Savvy White Woman, who knows just which products to buy and is happy to recommend them, occasionally counterposed with the Bumbling Emasculated Husband, who would be lost without his wife. (Again, it would be convenient to blame networks for taking such a sexist approach to ad programming, but the sad fact is, young families are the people who spend the most money on advertised goods, and most purchases for home and children are made by women. And the condescending tone of the ads themselves can only be blamed on ad agencies.)
In defense of the TV ad programmers, they go after the money: they program ads to the people watching … and it’s largely mothers with young kids who are watching (or more accurately, who are watching and then spending). Daytime TV has always been exclusively the purview of women, but primetime viewers, which used to include male viewers with gender-neutral programming, has slipped as non-public TV viewership has shifted towards the 18-to-49 year old female demographic. Watching TV is now, unbelievably, a feminine thing to do. Male viewers, on the other hand, have left for other media, primarily video games and the Internet.
This all creates an unfortunate feedback loop. TV caters more and more towards female viewers, meaning there’s less appealing programming on TV for male viewers, and male viewers drift to other media, and as a result, TV pitches advertising (and therefore programming) to the women who compose more and more of the audience.
This alone would be bad enough, but this is compounded by a short-sighted and frankly misogynist view of what women want. Based on TV programmers’ decisions, there are no intellectual women — no women with an interest in hard science fiction, no women with an interest in nature documentaries, no women with an interest in current affairs. The interests programmers do cater to: drama and culture. In 2007 (the most recent year for which I can find data in toto), the top ten shows averaged over the year were: 1. American Idol (Wednesday edition), 2. American Idol (Tuesday edition), 3. Dancing With the Stars (Monday edition), 4. Dancing With the Stars (Tuesday edition), 5. Sunday Night Football, 6. CSI, 7. (tie:) Grey’s Anatomy / Samantha Who, 9. House, 10. CSI: Miami.
There are one male-oriented and three gender-neutral shows on that list: football, and the two CSIs and House, respectively. The rest are distinctly estrogen-loaded. Contrast this with the top ten most pirated shows of 2007: (basically, shows that appeal to the largest audience of people who don’t watch TV, but rather spend their time in front of a computer): 1. Heroes, 2. Top Gear, 3. Battlestar Galactica, 4. Lost, 5. Prison Break, 6. Desperate Housewives, 7. 24, 8. Family Guy, 9. Dexter, 10. Scrubs. By my count, this list contains one female-oriented show, three gender-neutral shows (that’s being generous), and six male-oriented shows.
There are three striking things about these lists. The first is obviously that shows watched online are much more heavily male-skewed than shows watched on the TV set. So we can conclude there is a demand for male-friendly shows — just not necessarily a demand for them on TV. Secondly, not one of these shows appears on both lists. It’s as if they were two completely different media — and they are, in terms of delivery, but all 20 of these shows were produced for television; webcast and piracy are marginal revenue streams at best and totally unintended at worst. In reality, the disparity is due to two totally different audiences, made up of two totally different demographics.
Another striking difference is the formats of the shows involved: the TV list contains mainly shows that are self-contained, as opposed to serial. These shows are also (dare I say it?) pretty low-concept. The pirated shows are not only higher-concept, but are also mainly serials (seven, by my count).
To bring this back to my original point: it’s not just that TV is getting more female-oriented, it’s also getting lower-concept, and it’s getting blander. There is an audience for more male-friendly shows, higher-concept shows, and serials, but something about the delivery system of television is driving the audience for those shows away. If this trend continues, then ironically, at some point, there will be nobody left watching TV but younger women — and the entire medium will consist of niche programming. The difficulty in monetising webcasting is the only remaining barrier to the fulfillment of this trend.
It’s no secret that television has been struggling for years to keep viewers, but I can’t help but wonder if this latest manoeuver — the homogenisation of all specialty channels into a single dumbed-down female-friendly multi-channelverse — isn’t a little short-sighted. To broaden every channel to include cooking and talk shows, to live by the truism that you can’t lose money underestimating the public, and to pair that with Eleanor Roosevelt’s axiom about small minds — it reverses the belief that you have to start with quality programming and the audience will come. In fact, it seems predicated on the belief that the medium is good for nothing but hawking housewares to young women with families. If the programming continues to follow the advertising, TV can only ensure its own irrelevance. 
Please see the comments below for more on why TV programming skews towards female-friendly and low-concept shows; I would like to stress that these two epiphenomena are totally unrelated to one another!
I sort of alluded towards the end to the mystery of why, exactly, TV attracts viewers of low-concept, bland, non-serialised fare, while TV programming online tends to draw a more diverse group of people, who have a taste for more gender-neutral, higher-concept, edgier, and more serialised programs. It’s not much of a mystery, really; it has everything to do with how the programming is being watched.
TV watching, which has traditionally been contrasted with film watching, has certain features arising from the way shows were made, and the environment in which they are watched. Film, for example, predates TV; it has traditionally been watched in a darkened theatre, and it is shot using a single camera. There’s a lot of theory out there about the construction of the film viewer — sitting in the dark, the viewer’s body and immediate surroundings fade away. Watching the action onscreen, as the camera jumps from one angle to another, produces the illusion that the point of view demonstrated is detached from a corporeal body. The film viewer becomes invisible, omniscient, and non-corporeal.
Television, on the other hand, has traditionally been shot in a studio; the old 3-camera setup doesn’t cross the field of vision, so the viewer doesn’t get the opportunity to construct a point of view that eliminates his or her physical body. In fact, we’re encouraged to imagine ourself in an audience of bodies, who are often shown (as in cuts to shots of the studio audience) and even more often heard (as in the laugh track). Television does not encourage us to leave our bodies behind in quite the same way.
More than this, television has traditionally been watched not in a quiet, darkened theatre, but in a noisy and well-lit home. The medium is constructed to accomodate viewership as only one of several streams of activity a viewer may be undertaking: that is, it’s meant to be on in the background, and it often is; of the 7 hours the typical American home has a TV on, only a fraction of those involve active viewership. TV has therefore constructed modes to convey meaning in a noisy multi-activity environment: TV is much more dialogue-heavy than film (especially in terms of exposition), it relies more on sound cues to direct the viewer when to look at the screen (operating under the assumption that the viewer may otherwise be looking away), and using far more quick cuts, movement and bright colours to act as cues to important information. TV (and especially advertising) has adapted itself to an environment where it’s only one of several things going on at once.
Because TV is watched in the home, it’s also perfectly fine to talk during shows, unlike at the movie theatre, where it is NOT OK to talk during the show. TV programming tends to better serve communally-watched shows where attention is divided. Shows that demand a great deal of attention don’t work well in a home environment where one television serves several people simultaneously, and conversation is inevitable. It’s easier to follow variety shows, talk shows, sports and other easily-digested shows where information is not serialised — so this is what draws the audiences in front of the set.
The audiences watching TV shows online seek a very different experience than people watching the TV set in their living rooms: they are usually alone, and while they may be reading different websites, they are able to choose the focus of their attention, and can more easily follow high-concept storylines and serials. They choose the time and place of viewship, they look for specific programs (as opposed to flicking until they find something tolerable), and they can pause and rewind if they need to.
If you’ve ever brushed elbows with advertisers, you know that numbers don’t tell the whole story: the more engaged an audience is, the more effective advertising is. The first TV watching scenario I described is an advertiser’s nightmare: with their ads in the background, and conversation happening overtop, it’s all too easy to ignore the ads altogether. With an online viewer, not only are they rapt, not only are they alone, but you can also lock ads or make them interactive so the viewer HAS to pay attention to them, AND you can also target your ads much more effectively, because the datastream can contain loads of information about the viewer! Why this is not something that TV broadcasters are exploring more aggressively I don’t understand …. It might be because cable and satellite delivery systems make billions of dollars a year — but then, networks and the delivery systems have somewhat strained relations to begin with.
In short: TV is great as background noise, and TV is also great if you want to sit and watch something really engaging. But the time and place for both varieties is different, and the method of delivery needs to be different as well. TV may be a victim of its own success; its ubiquity is what makes it so easy to ignore. On a computer screen, where the viewer is more focussed, the experience is different, and this focus allows and demands a whole different type of programming.
The rub is that all TV is made for TV; so far, attempts to make original programming for the Internet-viewing audience have been meagre and weakly received, despite their advertising-friendly delivery. How much this will change remains to be seen.
The way this all relates to age and gender should be coming clear: women spend more time in the home than men, especially when supervising children. Parents also can’t abandon their children to engross themselves in a show (at least, not during primetime — and if they want to do it after the kids are in bed, they’ll have to head online). It’s women and younger people who watch the TV set, as opposed to TV programming online, because it is they who are in the home, in a supervisory role, with divided attention, and are unable to pursue more focus-intensive viewership. They watch TV, an inferior delivery system, not by choice, but of necessity.
That title had a whole different meaning before but it fits here, sadly. In a world with 500 channels why you’d try to appeal to everyone is beyond me. It will fail and they’ll try something else eventually. Hopefully revert to more specialized programming but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something else.
PS That Top 10 list is depressing. I watched ONE of those shows. And even it got cancelled.
As coconutphone pointed out elsewhere, there is also a technology gap to explain the difference between the two top ten lists. Navigating a torrent site to download a pirated program is an activity that skews slightly male, erecting a bit of a barrier between female viewers and pirated programs viewed online.
CRTC has permitted competition in e.g. sports and news networks.
Cf. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-562.htm
Also, if you’re going to use Canadian quotation-mark rules (periods and commas inside), then please use Canadian spellings (ostracised/generalised/serialised are incorrect; we use -ize/-yze endings). To your credit, you spell “yogurt” the sensible way (though that spelling appears only half the time). The noun “defence” is spelled thus (also “licence,” “practice” as nouns). Please stop using British English; it’s colonial.
I would argue that more on that latter list are “gender neutral” than might easily be assumed, but the issue of non-intellectual programming on television is a long-standing debate, not entirely just depending on female-centric programming.
The bland-ification of TV is going on because of network fears of trying new things in the “horrible recession” – most of the “new” things that are tried are broken off, and if you were to pitch “Lost” or “Babylon 5” or “Battlestar” today you’d probably get laughed out of the pitch – it’s a pendulum switch because the epoch is changing – and most nets aren’t really looking to find the ‘net presence yet because you “can’t” make your money back.
I confess my designation as male-oriented, female-oriented, or gender-neutral is both subjective and slightly arbitrary — but then, so are the pitch sessions where TV execs try to conjure up formulae to attract specific demos. I should clarify that I meant only that these shows are intended to skew to one gender or another, not that they would appeal exclusively to one gender, or that they would appeal to everyone of a given gender.
The blanding resulting from a fear of risk-taking is, I agree, only tangentially related to this gender skewing; there is a great article here that explains that by attempting to make themselves unobjectionable, newspapers have made themselves irrelevant — they have, in fact, totally undermined what they set out to do in the first place, which was to impart meaningful information. As they lost meaning, they lost readers. I would argue that many of the very persuasive arguments contained therein apply to the TV model as well.
David, you have several interesting points. Unfortunately they are mashed into a bit of a ramble which is tough to sort out. Are you saying tv is letting men down, but men still go online to download tv shows they missed on tv?? btw: women under the age of 40 are also huge users of the internet for downloading their favourite shows, which are also on tv. Some channels program to women — some to men. This is a business model that allows producers to focus their ideas to a viewer. When successful, it’s a win/win for the producer and the broadcaster. The broadcaster gets a hit. The producer, if he/she is saavy, can turn that into international sales and appreciative viewers in other countries. If the producer is hoping to get another commission from said broadcaster, then the ad revenue will also follow. And so it goes. One success begets another.
Also, women rank very high in demos for of sci-fi and crime shows. (Dexter, Battle Star Galactica, etc,) sometimes outpacing men, except for CSI, which is enjoyed by both genders. American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, etc are enjoyed by an entire family. These shows cut across all demographics. Families also like to watch tv together, regardless of how many male/females are in the household.
Advertisers do not create the viewer, they only respond to them. The viewer is a multi-faceted individual with many different interests and lifestyles. They are the true clients of tv. For any channel to program to everyone all the time is to lack a focus or an appreciation of different interests and points of view.
Men who work night shifts watch a lot of daytime programming. Women who work all day watch a lot of prime time programming.
Are you offended by the ads on tv or the content on tv? Two completely different topics. You end your piece with “tv can only ensure its irrelevance” To you? Or to the hundreds of millions of men and women who watch a plethora of tv on many different channels, because they make that choice out of free will. Forgive me, but are saying people are idiots?
One of the things I like most about blogging is the opportunity to learn and figure things out as I go. You can approach a subject from one direction and end up seeing it from an entirely different one.
I started out writing this essay because I was bummed about seeing my favourite brands disappear (Scream was a favourite channel of mine). I’m sure this post comes across as a little bit of male whining in parts, but it’s actually strengthened my feminist perspective.
To follow cause and effect in the reverse order of this post (in causational order): women are biologically designated, for better or for worse, the child bearers. Traditionally, they are child rearers as well, since it is they who lactate. As a result, even today, it is women who remain in the home most and assume the greater burden of child-rearing. They also perform the greater share of other domestic duties, like cooking and cleaning — I’m not saying that’s the way it should be, I’m merely remarking that those are the facts. TV works better in the multi-activity environment when it’s low-concept, and has broad cues. These same types of programs don’t work as well when your audience is looking for more sophisticated focus-intensive fare. When anyone — male or female — sits down to watch TV intently, without distraction, their viewership will skew towards scripted dramas, serials, and higher-concept shows.
Secondly, not only are women the primary homemakers and child-rearers, they are the primary shoppers for household goods.
Combined, these two facts make women with children the obvious target for TV advertising. They are the ones in the home with the TV on in the background, as one of several objects of attention; they are the ones unable to take advantage of focus-intensive programming on torrent, DVD, or even PVR. They are the easiest for advertisers to reach, because they have the least flexibility in their TV watching schedule. They are also the ones who spend money on the types of things advertisers want to promote.
As ABG says, “Advertisers do not create the viewer, they only respond to them.” TV ads will obviously be targeted towards the people who watch the ads and subsequently spend money. The programming is determined by the advertising; the shows are only there to attract viewers to the ads. Obviously, shows are only viable if they draw the type of viewers advertisers want to reach.
It’s only natural that more TV programmers want to make their shows palatable to female viewers; this is simply the laws of the marketplace bearing out. But interestingly, I think that while the statistical trend in passive (ie, background) TV watching leaning towards young mothers is slight, because programmers chase this slight edge, it creates a vicious circle (as the title of this post implies): the more programmers chase the audience of young mothers, the more it drives everyone else away (there now being more alternatives than ever), and the greater a percentage of TV viewers is made up of distracted young mothers, and so on.
If TV is being feminised (and I believe it is), don’t blame TV — blame society (as trite as that sounds) for the double-standard that places the greater burden of domestic chores and childrearing on women. And if it’s being dumbed down, blame the fact that anyone who can pursue an alternative method of delivery (Internet, DVD, PVR) will; only the people who let the TV drone in the background are sitting through the ads, so the ads have to reach people who are watching low-concept shows.
The problem with the networks’ approach is that TV as background noise doesn’t capture the whole picture of TV viewership. There’s two other factors to consider. The first is destination programming, also known as appointment programming. The other is secondary methods of delivery, and secondary streams of revenue.
Appointment programming draws viewers looking for focus-intensive higher-concept shows; they seek it out and watch it on the set with the same intensity that viewers online seek and watch TV shows on their computers. The trick here is getting your show to be an appointment show — this is the Holy Grail for TV everywhere. I would argue that the Simpsons in the early 90s was an appointment show. The X Files in the late 90s was an appointment show. Seinfeld, too. Today, Lost is the obvious example. Note that all of the above were blockbuster shows. These are shows that people — all types of people — consciously plan to stay home and watch, distraction-free. Appointment shows are really the only shows on TV that can get away with being focus-intensive and still draw huge numbers. The problem, of course, is that they’re both expensive to produce, and really rare — hence high-risk.
That leads into my second point: alternate outlets for viewing and secondary revenue streams. I’m talking, of course, about DVD sales and webcasting. These are two woefully neglected delivery methods. I believe that networks have started to factor future DVD sales into their decision to renew or not renew, but only just. Revenue from the Internet does not factor into their decisions at all.
Of course, appointment shows are precisely the kind of shows that perform well on DVD and the Internet. If a greater emphasis was placed on these two media, a much greater diversity of programming would be produced. It may not even be appropriate to put destination programming on TV, given the nature of the medium’s limitations. The tragedy is that as of this writing, if a show can’t perform on live TV, it won’t get the chance to perform anywhere else. Real-time rating of TV makes or breaks a show, despite the fact that real-time TV is dying, and other media make more and more sense all the time.
One example: Gossip Girl had a strong cultural impact. It’s ratings were also weak. Wired explains the rest.
Basically it boils down to this: there are lots of different kinds of people who enjoy TV shows, but in different ways. And due to the vagaries of home life, one small group is enjoying a growing influence over the types of shows that get shown — not just on TV, but also on DVD and the Internet. When we finally figure out how to monetise webcasting (personally, I think it’s just a matter of reaching critical mass), appointment programming will overtake background-noise programming, and we’ll start to see programming targeted at all the world’s colourful niches again.
Thanks David for such a thoughtful reply. You have clarified many of the points in the your original posting and I can now see the true thrust of your thesis. You are absolutely correct about ‘background-noise programming” aimed at women (usually scheduled in fringe prime) and your final sentence is also more than crystal ball gazing. When webcasting does reach a critical mass, and it will sooner than later, it will once again alter the landscape of choice. Radically.
Well … apparently South Park made an episode inspired by this idea years ago:
http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/south-park/season-13/south-park-1304-eat-pray-queef/#clip155565
Not for everyone.